State Bar of Nevada reprimands Las Vegas lawyer with troubled past
The State Bar of Nevada has issued a letter of reprimand to a once-suspended Las Vegas attorney with a checkered past that includes alcohol abuse, prostitutes and jail time.
The reprimand, which was issued in early September, comes about six years after Alex Ghibaudo was reinstated by the Nevada Supreme Court to practice law in May 2014. By then, he had been suspended for nearly five years.
According to the state’s highest court, Ghibaudo had been suspended for repeatedly abandoning clients, failing to provide an account of client funds, failing to respond to the office of bar counsel after repeated requests regarding multiple grievance files, and making several “unprofessional and demeaning telephone calls” to other attorneys.
In 2015, a year after he was reinstated, Ghibaudo shared his story of redemption with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, saying, at the time, that he believed he had made a comeback from “a downward spiral of epic proportions.” The downward spiral, he said at the time, was fueled by a mixture of his depression, bipolar disorder, “drinking heavily and spending time with prostitutes.”
But by at least 2017, two years after his story was published, Ghibaudo again was acting “negligently” and engaging “in conduct that is a violation of a duty owed as a professional, and causes injury to a client, the public, or the legal profession,” according to the reprimand.
Ghibaudo did not respond to a request for comment.
The latest mark on his disciplinary record stems from three separate grievances lodged against Ghibaudo. According to the reprimand, the attorney entered into an agreement with a “nonlawyer” to split legal fees and was negligent in both the supervision of an employee and in billing practices.
In 2017, the reprimand states, Ghibaudo agreed to pay a 20 percent client referral fee to Steve Sanson, a longtime Family Court critic and president of Veterans in Politics International, a local organization that says it “exposes corruption and unethical behaviors.” According to the reprimand, Ghibaudo paid Sanson for at least 12 client referrals.
“Your decision to share fees with Sanson has caused injury to the legal profession,” the reprimand states.
That same year, Ghibaudo also failed to provide a client with detailed billing, preventing the woman “from challenging the reasonableness” of his attorney fees. And in 2019, after a man had decided not to retain Ghibaudo following a consultation, the attorney’s paralegal publicly discussed the man’s child custody case on social media “and made false statements about his character.”
Ghibaudo must pay a $1,500 fine, according to the reprimand.
Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter.